Hosteurope.de shut down our servers due to “political incorrectness”

https://voat.co/v/announcements/comments/146757

by lingben • 11 years ago

107 126 11 years ago

c_prompt• 11 years ago

Cached: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https%3...

pki2• 11 years ago

So they were lying in the github repo about "based in Switzerland, no censorship policy as long as content is legal in Switzerland" when it was hosted in Germany on one of the cheapest providers all along, subject to a ton of speech restrictions in law?

fragsworth4• 11 years ago

It's not necessarily a lie. "Based in" usually just means that's where they operate. The servers can be anywhere. I wouldn't fault them for assuming a modern Western country had enough freedoms to let them host their servers.

pki2• 11 years ago

It would mean they didn't do even the most basic research though, as Germany isn't the first place you would look - it's reasonably common knowledge about their ideas of free speech and how certain subjects are really touchy

danko• 11 years ago

For those who need the context -- when Reddit had that big bust-up last week about banning subreddits like /r/fatepeoplehate, aggrieved commenters were recommending that others migrate to voat.co. That effectively means that voat.co recently absorbed the slimy runoff of Reddit's worst element.

Given that, it isn't wholly surprising that their hosting service wanted no part of them.

x5n16• 11 years ago

Given that, it isn't wholly surprising that their hosting service wanted no part of them.

It is very surprising, the hosting company should be concerned with providing hosting... not moderating content. that's the job of the government and the legal system.

mootothemax2• 11 years ago

What's the logical conclusion of that?

The government forcing private companies to host content that they disagree with?

You can't have it both ways.

slg• 11 years ago

And the German government, like all governments, (although Germany's laws are slightly stricter than most western governments) puts limits on free speech. Reddit has a tendency to demonstrate Godwin's law pretty quickly. For example, it is common practice to upvote a post with a link to a Nazi flag and a headline about some hated group in attempt to get that to be the default image for Google searches of that group. I imagine with Voat being a Reddit clone, similar things have popped up on it. Something like that could run afoul of Germany's laws regarding how to portray Nazi history and iconography. I could imagine Voat's hosting provider wanted to wash their hands of the site before the government actually tries to come after them.

DasIch• 11 years ago

Given voat's new community that content will be everything from the more "friendly" organizing harrassment and doxxing people to child pornography.

Nobody in his right mind is ever going to knowingly host them for long.

s73v3r7• 11 years ago

Do you want your company to be associated with harassment, even if you're not doing it directly?

sergiotapia2• 11 years ago

Please don't misrepresent what happened. A lot of people, myself included, left Reddit because I don't agree with the way the CEO is handling things. My leaving Reddit had nothing to do with fatpeoplehate being banned. I just don't agree with shadowbanning people and removing -distasteful- subreddits. I just don't visit them.

Reddit has become a marketing tool either way, so I that was just another drop in the bucket for me and I left.

m3rc• 11 years ago

Your personal reasons for not using reddit don't have any impact on the fact that most of the people switching over were either from the /r/fatpeoplehate, /r/kotakuinaction, and /r/conspiracy crowd. You can have whatever personal BS with the CEO you want, but the fact is that voat's ex-reddit userbase is all from what is essentially the worst parts of reddit.

fragsworth4• 11 years ago

They should have handled the /r/fatpeoplehate problem by hiding them from /r/all. Then nobody will see the subreddit unless they directly go to it and/or subscribe to it.

What they actually did reeks of incompetence. The reaction they got from banning the subreddit was entirely predictable, and because of this, gives the impression that they're pretty far disconnected from their users. It doesn't bode well for the long-term success of the site.

Someone12342• 11 years ago

I just don't agree with shadowbanning people and removing -distasteful- subreddits. I just don't visit them.

Please don't misrepresent what happened.

FPH has been bullying, harassing, and abusing individuals for almost a year. Pictures of people out in public, Facebook profiles, other Redditors, the Imgur staff, brigading other subs (inc. weight loss subs), attacking popular bloggers, YouTubers, and people on Twitter. Often this was just for the "crime" of being overweight and the abuse was nasty.

I'm tired of people defending this behaviour as being "distasteful" or "offensive." Even the title of Reddit's announcement was "removing HARASSING subreddits." And if you don't believe that's what FPH was doing then you literally didn't spend even one minute on it.

Key Reddit staff quotes:

subreddit as a platform to harass individuals
We’re banning behavior, not ideas.
based on their harassment of individuals
When we are using the word "harass", we're not talking about "being annoying" or vote manipulation or anything. We're talking about men and women whose lives are being affected and worry for their safety every day, because people from a certain community on reddit have decided to actually threaten them, online and off, every day. When you've had to talk to as many victims of it as we have, you'd understand that a brigade from one subreddit to another is miles away from the harassment we don't want being generated on our site.

If this is what you support, please leave Reddit. I welcome you gone.

sanswork4• 11 years ago

Unfortunately as is always the case with every popular social network/forum in the history of the internet when the "slimy runoff" says they are leaving what they actually mean is they are going to spend all day on in the same place talking above leaving and how shit the current site now is.

Reddit would be a much nicer place if everyone who threatened to leave over last weeks bans actually left.

MCRed2• 11 years ago

Tell that to the ghost town that is slashdot or Kuro5hin. To be honest, I see the same thing happening here already. So many posts on the front page with no comments, so much less comment activity than before. Feels like HN is emptying out.

Where they're going I don't know.

monksy4• 11 years ago

It's not just the worst. Its people that disagree with the current fad of "politically correctness." There were very few people that were sad to see most of those subs go, but those subs weren't well known.

The FPH was a response to the silly "body positive" movement that has been encouraging non-healthy behaviors. (The execution wasn't popular, but the idea of it is well supported)

Additionally: Another big reason for the migration is that the ban came out of nowhere. There was no interaction with the Admins, and there has been a threat that has been expressed by Pao. ["We're going to make it safe" (for who and what political adgenda has scared the users quite a bit)]

unbudgingprawn3• 11 years ago

FPH was posting photos of imgur's staff and sending them hatemail, I belive.

zorpner• 11 years ago

Its people that disagree with the current fad of "politically correctness."

Given that the subs which were removed were not removed for offensive speech but rather for encouraging and tolerating criminal harassment off-site, these "people" are either extremely misinformed or are using free speech/political correctness as red herrings to conceal their desire to harass and abuse.

s73v3r7• 11 years ago

If you're one of the people who agree with the behavior of FPH and many of the more vile comments about the CEO, then you're part of the worst.

ramy_d3• 11 years ago

    Given that, it isn't wholly surprising that their hosting service wanted no part of them.

Which means, by their own judgment, since voat.co isn't "correct" they deserve no warning, no refund, and no negotiation in good faith - only termination. How can you say that isn't surprising?

bluecalm4• 11 years ago

I don't like you labeling those people "slimy runoff of Reddit's worst element". I think this kind of labeling is commonly used these days (and especially on Reddit) to shut down unpopular ideas. There were 150k subsribers to fph and probably several times more readers. It was one of the most active subreddits at the time of the ban. How is it "slimy runoff of Reddit's worst element"? Maybe you know, there were many reasonable, frustrated with PC culture in there who just wanted to vent sometimes.

adventured• 11 years ago

I'm curious if someone with a lot of experience hosting in (or knowledge of hosting in) various countries in Europe, would opine on which are the least restrictive when it comes to speech?

pas• 11 years ago

Always host stuff that's "problematic" opposite from where it's problematic.

For example at least one European far-right site is hosted in the US.

You can host US critical stuff in the US, but if you start to attract a lot of traffic and active individuals, move out of the US. (Russia?)

mootothemax2• 11 years ago

Is it really that surprising that a hosting company doesn't want to host a site containing a tonne of hate speech?

There's no amount of money Stormfront could pay me to host their vile outpourings; why should a small site hosting hate speech of every type kick up a big fuss about similar treatment?

ramy_d3• 11 years ago

Then don't take their money. They didn't want to host voat then that's fine. There's a way to do get out of that too. Cutting cords and stiffing clients _is_ surprising.

bduerst4• 11 years ago

Yeah it seems that the big no-no here is that they pulled the plug suddenly and without notification.

That's not a good track record to have with your customers.

tomjen32• 11 years ago

Yeah that is pretty surprising actually. If I had shares in that company I would be pretty pissed they turned down a potentially big client.

shiggerino3• 11 years ago

The funniest thing about Stormfront is that they run on PHP.

zajd11• 11 years ago

Good. It's getting tiring seeing bigots, racists and assholes hide behind the veil of "free speech"

steveeq14• 11 years ago

Really? Would you rally behind an Ice Cube CD being banned over racist lyrical content?

zajd11• 11 years ago

If I thought Ice Cube was a racist asshole hiding behind "free speech" I would. Kind of like RaHoWa: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rahowa_(band)

FireBeyond• 11 years ago

If Ice Cube was trying to find people's Facebook accounts, addresses or other information and then actively harass them, then yes, I would.

joshuapants2• 11 years ago

"Free speech except for things I find distasteful" isn't free speech at all.

zajd11• 11 years ago

I think hate speech should be made illegal in America like it is in the rest of the civilized world.

markbnj3• 11 years ago

That's an awfully deprecating comment about a basic and fundamental human right. How can you have freedom without it also empowering people you'd rather weren't empowered? Have we all lost the ability to be discerning? So now we need outside entities to curate what we see, to protect our delicate sensibilities? Sorry, not me. I vastly prefer the risk of running into distasteful crap.

zajd11• 11 years ago

Freedom and laws are not mutually exclusive. Some forms of speech should not be allowed, specifically hatespeech.

lingben5• 11 years ago

if you feel that way, then reddit is by far the larger community when it comes to bigots, racists and assholes than voat.co because they are the home to /r/GasTheKikes and /r/coontown and many many other reprehensible subreddits

even so, you are still wrong because free speech means exactly that, speech that you or I may not agree with.

if it were limited to speech that only some or the majority aligned with then it wouldn't be called 'free speech' would it?

zajd11• 11 years ago

For the record, I would cheer those subreddits getting banned as well. Don't mistake my comments for a defense of reddit.

s73v3r7• 11 years ago

Free speech is freedom from government censorship. A private company is not obligated to host your filth.

tomjen32• 11 years ago

There is no such thing as "free speech". There is only free speech or censorship and there is no such thing as hiding behind free speech.

The company behind is not obligated to host it, but that is not relevant for your comment.

zajd11• 11 years ago

False dichotomy. Try again.

saintx• 11 years ago

Freedom to assemble doesn't guarantee access to private venues. Contrary to intuition, all spaces on the Internet are private spaces.

ramy_d3• 11 years ago

That's not the issue.

wvenable2• 11 years ago

Free speech does not guarantee you a soap box to stand on. If nobody anywhere is willing to give you a soap box that's your problem. Now there is an argument to be made that speech isn't truly free if you have nowhere to say it. However even with the laudable goal of ensuring all speech as a home somewhere, that still would not obligate any private person or organization to supporting it.

There is no public unowned property on the Internet.

If you downvote this comment it probably means you disagree with the sentiment but still choose to suppress this speech to express that disagreement.

seivan• 11 years ago

It's very unfortunate and reminds me of http://paulgraham.com/say.html

tetrep• 11 years ago

Regardless of how the hosting provider feels about the content they're hosting, it's very unprofessional to terminate a contract so absolutely with no warning. They could have easily given the site a few days, if not weeks, to migrate to another service, but they instead chose to immediately kill not just the hosts of voat.co but all of the hosts under the account, which included an entirely unrelated blog with scientific papers.

I find it scary that so many commenters find this to be a natural course of action for a hosting provider to take. A hosting provider caring about what I host, other than whether or not it's legal, is just as absurd as my ISP caring about what packets I send (once again, other than the legality of them). While a hosting provider's role isn't nearly as "utility" as an ISP, it's certainly close and I would be appalled if the majority of hosting providers actually took stances like this. A minority is to be expected, no different than a book publisher only publishing Christian books, but if the average book publisher was expected to publish only Christian books, I would be quite frightened.

s73v3r7• 11 years ago

What's unprofessional is to break your hosting provider's ToS, which you knew ahead of time.

lingben5• 11 years ago

Can you please cite hosteurope.de's ToS where it says that their clients content must be "politically correct" and that "politically incorrect" content will result in an immediate revocation of the account?

sergiotapia2• 11 years ago

One mans morality is another's joke. Hint: shariah law, etc.

rndn• 11 years ago

    (3) The Client may not infringe statutory prohibitions, moral
    standards or the rights of third parties (copyright law, trademark
    law, rights to the name and data protection law etc.) through his use
    of his website or the banners that appear on the website. […] In the
    event of any infringement of one of the aforementioned obligations,
    the Provider shall be entitled to suspend the provision of his
    services with immediate effect or to block access to the Client’s
    information.

https://www.hosteurope.de/download/General_Terms_and_Conditi...

IANAL, but this may count as moral standards of third parties.

lingben5• 11 years ago

So hypothetically hosteurope.de could take down almost any fashion blog or picture of a woman hosted on their servers because in Saudi Arabia it is illegal to show a woman's body?

http://observers.france24.com/content/20090601-spot-differen...

Yes, a bit facetious but the point is that such a 'moral' clause is so wide that it can be misused at will. What is moral for one person may not be for another and what's moral in one society may not be in another.

Beyond that, it must be noted that hosteurope.de did not cite this as their reason. They did not use the 'moral' clause but their exact words were 'politically incorrect'.

x5n16• 11 years ago

moral standards

there is no such thing as a "moral standard".

davidgerard2• 11 years ago

I have slight doubts that the German company wrote to the Swedish user based in Switzerland in English.

Personally I suspect hosteurope pulling the plug has more to do with the neo-Nazi forums and borderline child porn. (Voat operates by Swiss laws on legality of porn, which allow stuff Germany doesn't.)

It is possible that Voat is spinning this to make themselves look good. Also, they want more donations.

thaumaturgy• 11 years ago

Hah. In that thread they have a comment near the top complaining about "censorship and outrage culture", and then on their home page they have a popular thread recommending that they all contact hosteurope.de's customers (https://voat.co/v/whatever/comments/146949).

geofft• 11 years ago

The thing I've found completely baffling about the apparent Voat exodus (although not from any Reddit communities I'm a part of, as it happens) is that nobody knows what the organizational structure or credibility of Voat is, and nobody even reliably knows who's behind the site.

The most that you can find is the GitHub source, which says it's "based in Switzerland, no censorship policy as long as content is legal in Switzerland". This may or may not be true. This was certainly not usefully true, if there's a German host with censorship powers.

The user agreement (https://voat.co/help/useragreement) calls itself "a legal agreement between you and us", with no definition of "us". It also has a DMCA response policy, which strikes me as odd for a Switzerland-based company (but maybe this is normal?).

The about page (https://voat.co/about) claims it's a project from two Swedish college students. Even assuming that this is true, this isn't such a best-case scenario: we've seen many examples of sites (4chan, Reddit, etc.) where the founders were in high school or college and were at least somewhat in favor of unrestricted speech, but as their sites grew, and as they themselves grew, they've changed their minds. (Incidentally, parts of the brain that regulate appropriate social behavior, like the prefrontal cortex, only fully develop by age 25.) Even if everything Voat says about themselves is true, we should worry that in a couple of years they'll grow a conscience too.

bluecalm4• 11 years ago

I think it's more frustration with Reddit and looking for a place with less group-think and censorship than confidence in Voat. There aren't many alternatives to Reddit so people are trying w/e look like it could become one.

arfliw• 11 years ago

I don't believe his identity is public but unless Atko has been spinning an elaborate lie, plenty is known about him and Voat. He's a Swedish student who went to college in Switzerland and this was a side project that blew up on him, not unlike how Facebook started. He just graduated from college, went on vacation with his family and is now headed back to Switzerland to run this like a real company.

I agree that the best case scenario for Voat is to inevitably do exactly what reddit is doing now, whether he realizes it or not. That's how it works. Right now Voat is amazing. I'm enjoying it while it lasts.

OBAMA_THE_NOOB• 11 years ago

You stupid shmendricks!

Hosteurope is a German hosting company.

And we Germans have only very limited freedom of speech here!

davidgerard2• 11 years ago

Hosteurope notes that this claim was completely false: https://archive.is/TqQDn It appears to have been a lie from Voat to solicit funds.

Hosteurope.de shut down our servers due to “political incorrectness”

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